As You Were

by Elaine Feeney

  Conversations spun.

  Now hello. Who do we have here? Are you on any medication? Have you anyone at home? Do you drink? How much on average? Ah now. Come now. A week? Liver enzymes. Sharp scratch. Deep breath. Have you slippers? A bag? Perhaps you’d like a glass of water? Oh, we are so sorry, we’ve no plastic glasses. Or water. No, no jugs either no, sorry. You can buy water bottles in the Hospital shop. No, sorry, no one has time to bring you there. It’s only on the Ground Floor. Oh, yes, you’re all lines. Well, maybe later.

  ‘Morning,’ said Michal Piwaski, as he walked briskly onto the Ward, cracking his pale knuckles into a thin fist. He checked his watch. Margaret Rose Sherlock was perched in the bed opposite me.

  ‘Morning,’ she replied to Michal and threw an eye over the cover of HELLO! magazine.

  Michal Piwaski passed out my bed and busied himself fussing about Shane-no-one-caught-a-surname, my neighbour.

  ‘Hullo,’ Patrick Hegarty said.

  ‘Morning, Mr Hegs,’ Michal Piwaski replied, while tucking Shane’s chin on top of his collarbone, using one bone off the other as leverage. Unfortunately this left Shane’s narrow mouth wide open like a delicate orchid. Michal then busied himself with wiping Shane’s gaunt face vigorously with a blue washcloth.

  ‘Ah now, well, Good Morning, you see, isn’t it early you’re all up and about?’ Jane Lohan said excitedly, to no one in particular, and stood out of bed, grabbing on to the window frame. A breeze billowed outside, and Jane Lohan begun a half-pirouette with her arse cocked upwards.

  Claire Hegarty, the attentive daughter of Patrick ‘Hegs’ Hegarty, sat directly opposite Shane, on an elaborate leather visitor’s chair, and yawned silently while scanning the middle pages of the Irish Independent. She read out yesterday’s parliamentary proceedings in Dáil Eireann to her father who began shaking his head while making disapproving noises. He was an awkward rotund sort of man-boy, balding, particularly hard to age and with a most peculiar sheen to his face.

  At first it had been difficult to be so close to other humans, the unreserved way of us, for the engineering of the human body is not, sadly, inclined to modesty during illness, contrary to my own best efforts. The rationale for not being given a private room, despite paying private health insurance, had been given to Alex upon my check-in, in many loud acronyms. Private rooms are only for the most seriously infectious, MRSA, GBA, GBH, HIV, Clap, Strep, A B C D, Z-eka Virus, ADD, EBD, DTs, ALP.

  Margaret Rose Sherlock put down HELLO! and picked up her ebony rosary beads, glancing her good eye over Shane as she muttered some prayers, ending loudly with The Agony in the Garden.

  Then she closed down her good eye to match the bad one.

  Shane’s Wi-Fi Connect?

  Nice one. G’man Shane. April Fool’s Day Headlines.

  Hulu promises TV Abbreviated to match our shortening attention spans

  Amazon launches Petlexa, guaranteed to read your cat’s requests

  Shane was recovering from a heart op, returning to the Ward after a couple of nights in ICU. He had shattering paralysis after dancing off his bike at high speed on the greasy Galway–Dublin M6 surface some years back, after it first opened. Everyone fussed around him, plugging in his MacBook, popping in his peg feeds. No visitors, just some Enable Ireland interns and a banana board with a smiley emoji face.

  Now, now, we’ll have you fixed in no time, Shane. Everyone lift and groan and again. Now. Fixed. In. No. Time. And did you hear? Lift. And down. Lift. And lift again. Count. Fixed in no time. And. Now, ah, you’ll have to work with us, Shane. Want anything in the shop, love? No. K. G’man. Lift, and turn. And lift. Oooh. Ouch. And burst. Down, please. Sudocrem, please.

  Margaret Rose Sherlock had had a stroke, most likely. Her bloods were a little wayward. She had further and more pressing complications from a wanker husband who had abandoned her and was now missing-in-action with Bernie, his long-time mistress. Usually, it was only a day or two at most, but Margaret Rose hadn’t been able to locate the exact coordinates of Paddy for some weeks now and so she’d been unable to persuade him to return home. Ordinarily, she’d be relieved with the break, and had become used to it over the years of their marriage, adept at passing off his absence as family business, but her second youngest daughter, Niquita, was soon to be married, and getting tetchy about her father’s absence. Niquita Sherlock was, in fact, beginning to panic, for her betrothed, Jonathan O’ Keefe, was getting impatient and developing a habit of looking at young wans of the Lally family.

  Margaret Rose Sherlock had a rose-gold Nokia on which she conducted her business. She couldn’t make or take a call without a considered amount of pre-­planning the bathroom’s vacancy. Alternatively, for some peace and quiet, she’d dive under the Hospital’s white bed sheet and chat away under there, where she could be still heard perfectly.

  Jane Lohan appeared on the surface to be rather genteel. She had some form of dementia, peppered with the oddest moments of intense lucidity, followed by any manner of madness – often manifesting in bizarre physical moves. She was spritely and agile for a woman in her eighties, but seemed all alone in the world, despite claiming a large family of nine grown-up children, and a husband, Tom, for whom she appeared to care (on a practical level), and an unnamed dog that she loved most in the world.

  Hospital is Street, with its odd old sumptuary laws, a place to score. You scavenge for razors, shower gel,

  coffee, a diagnosis that makes sense, and the most sought-after of all, a Care Plan. On the Ward you scored off the care assistant, Michal Piwaski.

  ‘How’s yar wife, Michal?’ Margaret Rose asked.

  ‘Oh, is tired . . . tired,’ Michal said, rushing about with a heavy load of soiled sheets. ‘I need to give her tea and put her feet up and fix her before I leave, see.’ He began lifting my lines, then stood me up, helping me out of my wet leggings.

  I smelled his morning’s coffee. Stale.

  ‘And then she ’ees shouting –’ Michal threw his thin arms to the air – ‘she ’ees now all the time shouting at Michal . . . Michal, I need help. Stay home, Michal, what if baby comes and I here alone and you in that big Hospital with people, giving them tea . . . what about me, Michal, and your baby? Make tea for me, Michal Piwaski . . .’

  Jane Lohan began screeching as she pulled a cannula from her thin wrist. Blood sprayed upwards and forwards like my son’s urine when he stood up for the first time in the garden and peed. Proudly. Michal abandoned me as I tried with some difficulty to pull a T-shirt over my head.

  ‘What you gone and done, now, now, good Janey? Ah, all she wants is perhaps make baby come, quicker, quicker . . . always wanting baby to come quicker,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I mean what is the rush? Hmmm? Why would we rush baby? But Karolina is well, thank you, mind you very fat and swollen on the ankles.’

  I licked up to Michal because Margaret Rose told me his cheap coffee worked to open the bowels and give you an energy surge. He also had an uncanny way with doctors, making them divulge things, as he was neither apologetic nor shy and he didn’t read social cues very well, which gave him accidental power.

  Welcome to the Ward. Named after a saint. Female. French. Five of us. And Claire.

  *

  Hysterical after Magpie, the next morning, I had driven into town, skidded on the pavement outside my office and left a wing mirror around a Children Crossing sign. I ran in and out, breathless. The offices were barely recognisable. I don’t know if I met anyone. I think back and imagine that surely I must have passed out the receptionist, Martha, or the guy who does all the design and layout, and I don’t know did I look in the frosted glass at my accountant, Liam, but I don’t remember it, except that the walls seemed to hang down over the desks, or the ceiling had fallen in some feet. I filled my arm cradle with a map of Bulgaria, brown envelopes, an opened sheaf of A4 paper, two dried-up yellow highlighter pens, three pearl dark green tampons, a box of fruity tea, a protein bar (salted caramel), a ream of paper and a waste
d tube of Clarins’ handcream. In over ten years I’d never left the offices for longer than a hiatus to look at high-risk properties abroad and the obligatory annual ten-day all-inclusive, where my anxiety would reach peak Fucked Up.

  Later that week, I let everyone know I was stepping aside for a while. Weekly updates, but I was to be left alone. Alex was thrilled. Finally. A break. Time out. Mindfulness. Me time. And we had some bubbly to celebrate that I threw down the loo. I didn’t know how to tell him.

  I didn’t plan to go into private industry. I didn’t dream about it as a kid lying awake at night listening to the pigs squealing outside, or the bitch whining when her pups were taken from her, or the cows cawing out for their calves. I don’t know if I enjoyed buying properties or selling them more, but there was a certain rush, dividing rooms into smaller liveable options and it was what I knew. I understood something about organising bricks on land and it made me deeply satisfied. There was something ferocious in covering over the earth until you could no longer see it, forgetting it ever existed.

  They’re not making any more of it, land, Father’d say, cursing and muttering under his breath.

  That’s no job for a woman.

  This made me more determined and wild in my decisions.

  Eventually even Alex grumbled about it. At first, it was the lack of time I had for him, but then it was something worse, something more direct about my choices, and in turn, something more direct about me. You’re not who I married, he’d go on, I thought you wanted to own a farm and make cheese or do something useful (for that was my original promise). When will it be enough? How much is enough?

  Until the I-don’t-even-know-who-you-are-any-more-exasperation set in.

  Alex and I learned, in time, to stop asking awkward questions about each other’s days. And if we did, in a tick-box way, we chose topics with neutral buoyancy. He’d fill me in on Jacob’s spelling tests, doctor visits, braces. Nathan’s cat obsession, dinosaur films, karate belts, Christmas lists. Joshua’s play dates, swimming strokes and trampoline prowess. I’d fill him in on office politics. Chit-chat. Aside from the children, food and drink produce took a decent chunk of conversation time. Fit Bits. Weighing Scales. Vacuum Cleaners. Deep Freeze. Potted plants. Sunday lunch spots. Bathroom fixtures. Passive Housing; A Greener Way of Living. (Can a house ever be passive?) Car Services. Winter Coats. Winter Tyres. His Mother (though neither neutral nor buoyant). Netflix. Soccer Transfers. Almond Milk. Cutting down on bacon. Cutting down on dairy. Cutting down on sugar. Cutting down on one-use plastic. Taking up Yoga. Too slow. Taking up Bikram. Too hot. We need to make time for each other. We do. Tomorrow. Promise. Hotel. No. Awkward Hotel Sex. Printer ink. Apple trees.

  *

  Our daughter would be nine now, tucked in between Nathan and Jacob. Alex never speaks about her. Before landing on the Ward, I hinted about her the odd time, usually when I was drunk, but that rarely went anywhere, for he’d shut me out, mostly by leaving the room, or heading out on his bike. I tried dropping her name in here and there, but even I’d begun acting as if she hadn’t existed either. Only ever inside of me and there’s a tight rein on language we use for events that go on inside the body, especially inside your uterus, to the extent that sometimes I wonder did I imagine her, dream her all up, alone. Confinement is such a mad liminal place. Dreamlike. Nightmarish.

  At the beginning of the week on the Ward, Alex was easily convinced I had respiratory failure caused by a nasty infection, which had lingered for months, hence all the nee-naw drama. Alex liked to believe what I told him, it was an efficient way to coexist and not go mad. He expressed most concern for the awful Hospital coffee and offered to rig up a Nespresso machine on my nightstand until we were all back to normal. He loved normal. He had packed my bag and also perched the photo of us all at Santa’s grotto on the Hospital nightstand, a large laminate thing that beamed and was flimsy beside a wicker basket that once belonged to my mother. In the picture we look happy, holding plastic flutes of mulled wine and the children with paper pots of marshmallows and strawberries dribbled over with warm milk chocolate. And though he was upset at first that the children couldn’t visit, I countered it by saying I’d be terrified they’d contract the same woeful hack as myself, and begrudgingly, he agreed.

  Though I refused the coffee machine as I think Nespressos are for bell ends that drive Land Rovers

  in cities and eat avocados with poached eggs and turmeric.

  New mail. Ping. Inbox.

  Seven Ways to Boost your Metabolism

  ‘You not getting out of bed, should lie down, lie down, good . . . good . . . do you want me to take you somewhere?’ Michal asked me.

  one – power up with protein

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Wherever you like, oh, but it’s so rattling. So not good. You need sit up, or get some air? My, my, it would worry me if it was my chest rattling as yours.’

  It did worry me.

  two – fuel up with water

  ‘Lave her be,’ Margaret Rose said, ‘she isn’t even fit far a walk to the loo.’ She motioned at me to lay back on my pillow as she took a few deep breaths, encouraging me to imitate her.

  three – Go on top while having sex and work those abdominal muscles

  Margaret Rose began another decade of the rosary as she picked up her phone and squinted at the screen, and then dropped it down hard on the table-tray, anxiously awaiting some communication. She repeated the action.

  four – park away from your destination, walk a little, cardio surge, work the heart

  When I was a kid I tied a grocery-shop plastic bag in a crude knot at the nape of my neck, tight. I held a pen in my hand to see how long I could withstand it, before I’d need to stab it and take in air quickly like the junkie scenes on Casualty, pen through windpipe.

  Bang.

  It grabbed my mother’s attention for the day. She banned me from watching Casualty.

  five – drink iced water every hour

  I watched as our nurse, Molly Zane, changed incontinence pads and injected my Ward friends. Their shadowy grey hips stacked on top of each other, milk-udder catheters, black eyes, rasping chests, hollowed-out shoulders.

  six – eat raw chillies (remember to wash your hands afterwards)

  I crouched in the tiny bathroom with its infinite London Tube-like tiling and inspected myself all over, ravenous to find something, a sign that would show people my sickness without me having to explain, without having to case it in language, something outward and obvious, like a kid with a Finding Nemo Elastoplast on his knee. I found one resilient tiny V-shaped tea stain of fake tan on my right ankle. Otherwise I was a washed-watercolour hanging in a cheap hotel, all white and purple, the skin barely covering my bones. Streaks of new blue bruises from the lines ran up my arms. I wished I had put on a fresh layer of tan, even just run one of those wipes over me, like I do on my ankles and wrists in winter. That would have done.

  seven – masturbate and build good muscle definition in upper arms (rigid)

  I was delayed once, outside a gaudy apartment block, waiting for some Irish kids to wake up from their sun holiday piss-up. The white tour bus revved and choked on its fumes. A group of women were turning wank-tricks for loose coins before Ryanair could get them for charity or Lotto cards. The women ushered their prey behind a scattering of ugly Dragon trees. The men were lured by their own devilish blood sap – a promise – like how bright orange seedpods would burst open on the tree branches. They’d return to the cracked pink pavement, with weeds shooting up between the slabs, disorientated/relieved, zipping up their fly, in the way men do, lifting their torso up and exaggerating a double chin. Some ran out bewildered, catching their bollocks in the zipper. The women squeezed short darts of bottled mineral water over the arch of their hand, just where the thumb attaches itself to the pointy finger, and continued their chats with each other over the sound of crickets and wet skin being slapped like a chicken fillet before frying. I thought about returning soon
, and so I did and I bought an old house there, gutted it, and rented it out as some tattoo parlours and a large nail bar.

  *

  A stethoscope lay in the basket, abandoned by a young intern in a bleeper hurry. I listened to my own chest. Heard my heartbeat (heart beat) beat. Wafting from the nightstand came the smell of lavender from the mouldy basket. My mother was always reusing things.

  It started out as days, not telling Alex the news. At first the words didn’t come, nor did I attempt to form them – I needed more time to figure out the language, but this had lingered to months, in the way time does.